“... literary types and promising young men – from the ex-queen of Spain to Wallis Simpson to Noël Coward and, on one occasion, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. Maugham’s appetite for society sat oddly alongside his aloofness. One guest recalled that he would come to meet new arrivals with outstretched arms in a gesture of welcome, then ‘the arms ...”

“... than those who followed a career in gardening, cookery or design. The Boxes, nicknamed by Noël Coward ‘the Brontës of Shepherds Bush’, didn’t die at the Elephant but neither did they or their contemporaries blaze a trail. The scarcity of female directors and producers in the film industry is still marked and periodically lamented. The ...”

“... Renaissance figures such as John Dowland and Thomas Campion.’ (She might have looked sideways to Noël Coward, Bob Dylan or Cole Porter; to John Cage’s poetry, Ezra Pound’s operas, the compositions of Christopher Fry or Anthony Burgess.) One of the aims of her study is to rescue Gurney’s later work from accusations of madness, and offer it as ...”

“... our Finest Man.’ But after that the story dies away in minor ditties by Sagittarius, Noel Coward and William Scammell. Regretting the ‘remarkable shortage’ of ‘good, straight’ verse written about ‘public events in England over the past thirty years’, our anthologist adopts a policy of charitable evacuation. His collection seems to suggest ...”

“... of the ‘mandarin approval’ of ‘wits so exquisite and discriminating’ as Raymond Mortimer, Noël Coward and Desmond Shawe-Taylor; on the publication of a book of poems a flurry of plaudits – ‘grimly entertaining’, ‘brilliantly funny and intimate’ – is produced. Barbera and McBrien summarise and categorise her output according to ...”

“... engagements, there was more time for a circle of friends that included the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton, Noël Coward and Benjamin Britten. As time and death thinned the old guard she made new friendships, notably with Ted Hughes, arranging to split the laureate’s traditional allowance of sherry with him. Amid the fun there was an inevitably growing number of ...”

“... throwing a live squid into the bedroom misfired badly and in the end she had to go and stay with Noël Coward. Maurice Bowra told Edith Sitwell that he would shoot himself if Lehmann had one more affair: he could no longer stand ‘being kept up all night’ while she ‘examined her and everybody else’s motives’. Bowra christened her, unkindly but ...”

“... to the failure of art to detach him from the maelstroms of public fame and private despair. Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence make an unsettling odd couple in a February 1931 New Yorker, their writhing bodies entangled and wrestling on the ground. As his large hand circles her thin neck, it fixes the actress’s long fingers and fingernails in ...”

“... this dippy Mamas and Papas tune floating along nicely among the debris. Extraordinary, as Noël Coward put it, how potent cheap music is; extraordinary also how sad. According to Chase Twichell in the poem ‘Why All Good Music Is Sad’, from her first Faber collection Perdido (1991), That’s why all good music is sad. It makes the sound of ...”

“... clock ticks on. The servants are all downstairs, watching TV. Mummy and Daddy have gone to the new Noël Coward at the Globe. Sometimes there is a bang from the street outside – backfire, says Nanny. Sometimes there’s a scream from the cellar – Nanny’s lips tighten, but she doesn’t say anything ... Is it to be wondered at that, from time to ...”

“... makes cowboys of us all,” ’ and that the Sphere is allowed to bend another ‘coward’ proverb upon Noel Coward. Aldous Huxley (‘When Greek meets Greek ...’) here speaks of ‘the tug of bores’; and G.K. Chesterton, more searchingly, insists that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing ...”

“... from her husband, but it places no shade on her own affection. Michael had an intense affair with Noël Coward during the war. ‘Noël said that he hadn’t wished to hurt me,’ Rachel wrote years later, ‘and that it was no use having regrets about what you have done, but he had found Michael so irresistibly ...”

“... was once present when an unprepossessing, arrogant (and straight) young show-off was introduced to Noël Coward with an aria of praise ending in the proclamation: ‘He is a genius!’ Coward looked him up and down, observing as he turned away: ‘He’d better be.’ Tracking Spike Milligan through his 67 years, we ...”

“... than his elder brother, he was the good time who was had by all, including, it was said, Noël Coward and the Duchess of Argyll. Of their sister, Princess Mary, who married the Earl of Harewood in 1922, history has had little to say and disappointingly Cadbury has nothing to add. In her detailed account of the family’s responses to the ...”

“... both aficionados of Hollywood musicals, could be heard breaking into duets of Cole Porter or Noël Coward – Meriel in tune, Francis undoubtedly faultless with the lyrics. At six o’clock a half-bottle of Teachers would be purchased for ‘pre-drink drinks’ – a deadline gradually pulled forward to 5.30. You would hear, at moments, hysterical ...”